FOCUS: A gospel gaze in a Peeps culture

{I shared last week that things are a bit cray-cray at my house as we move on Saturday (tucked in between the Good Friday evening service and Easter morning service). My house looks like a bomb went off, and my to-do list is as long as my leg, BUT in the midst of this I want to FOCUS my gaze on Him. This week is the perfect opportunity to FOCUS on His face in the midst of the crazy-mundane. So I’m revisiting these thoughts from a few years ago, and I hope perhaps some tidbit from them can be encouraging for you too as we celebrate Passion Week, and what our glorious Savior accomplished for us on the cross. Thanks so much for joining me this week as we look to Him.}

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I took my kids to Winco last week.  I know, I’m not sure which is worse, going to the mall on Christmas Eve or going to Winco at noon during flu season with two small children. No matter what precautions I take it’s inevitable that at some point I look down and one of them is resting his or her mouth on the edge of the cart. I turn into psycho-mom: “STOP! DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!!”

Now, keep in mind I am a very focused shopper. I have my list (that’s short) and I maneuver strategically through the store to cross off said items and exit as quickly as possible.  Obviously shopping alone is the best way to achieve this, but I thought I’d be fun to take my kids with me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was masterfully weaving through the aisles, and was just about to head into the shortest line when I made my one fatal mis-step. The last item on my list was hairspray and I needed to pass by the Easter display in order to reach the toiletry aisle. I should have skipped it.  (Who needs hairspray?) But I did and so I risked it.

Big mistake. As soon as we turned a corner the ENORMOUS pink bunnies stared at us, along with 8-foot high wall-displays of Peeps in every color and chocolate bunnies as tall as my daughter, and pastel baskets and eggs and purple Cadbury packages as far as the eye could see.

“WOW!! Mommy, look! Look!!!”

And then there was no stopping the commotion of excitement and what are these and can we have them and maybe next year and when I’m older and just a bite and I wonder what they taste like and can I use my Christmas money to get some??? PLEASE???”

We came out of it fine, without any pastel-purchases AND without tears, so that was no small victory, but my sweet children were such a picture of ME so often, of us, of our culture. And of course I adore my children so I make this application with affection because the same way I bear with and understand (and even find humor in) their something-shiny nano-second attention spans, I believe God looks at us with affection (and perhaps humor) when we demonstrate that same sort of focus. Hopefully, however, we grow up just a bit.

That’s my prayer for us this coming week. That we would have a gospel-gaze in a Peeps-culture. 

First off, don’t worry—I’m not here to rant and rave about how evil the Easter bunny is.  I find that a teaspoon of inspiration is worth a truckload of brow-beating, so my hope for this week is that as we simply look at the Easter story, we will be so captivated by its beauty that we get a gospel-gaze. A fixed FOCUS on Christ that carries us through the distraction of shiny-objects and the commotion and chaos of not just the Easter season but LIFE.

See, life here in this culture can be distracting, yes? We live in a Peeps culture. And I don’t just mean the hideous marshmallowy things, although they do a pretty good job representing what we typically seek after—bright colors, instant sugar-high, long-term headache, lethargy and craving for more. Right? But even the name Peeps — by definition “peep” is to “look quickly and furtively at something.”

We are, as a culture, constantly peeping from one thing to the next. Always the next newest shiny thing, the next fad, the next quick fix. But Scripture draws us to leave the peeping life of distraction and  fix our focus on Christ. With a gospel-gaze we intentionally choose to turn out the distracting cacophony of competing voices and noises, and we choose to zero in on the cross and filter all of life through the lens of the gospel. The only way to do this is to look — often — at Jesus. The more we focus on Him, the light of the world, the more we’ll be able to see the rest of our lives in their true light. So that’s what we’re doing this coming week, looking at Jesus through the events of Passion Week.

Letting His life bring FOCUS to our own. 

Thanks for reading.